Peace & Non-Violence

In a Tax Day statement, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein called for a massive reduction in U.S. military spending, with her campaign saying that “in addition to bankrupting us financially and morally, the inflated military budget has created a trigger-happy foreign policy, leading to disastrous military interventions and regime change. In the Middle East, this has produced failed states, mass refugee migrations, and ever-worsening terrorist threats.”

Stein said, “The best way to reign in wasteful federal spending is to slash the dangerously bloated military budget by at least 50%. … Instead of needless and destructive wars, that make us less safe not more safe, it’s time to bring our tax dollars home to rebuild America. We can build real security funding schools, creating jobs, providing universal healthcare, repairing our infrastructure and funding the transition to 100% clean renewable energy.”

Green Party National Co-Chair Andrea Mérida spoke with Truthout about mass incarceration and prison reform. She said the Green Party wants “‘to make a deep analysis of the neoliberal policy that impacts the situation’…pointing out that mass incarceration is ‘not just simply about bigotry.'”

Truthout says the Green Party platform “maintains that justice systems should be ‘based in love, compassion, nonviolence and humility, while at the same time provide protection for those who have been harmed and for the rest of society.’ The party particularly promotes systems of restorative and transformative justice that advance crime prevention by ‘looking at the systemic roots of crime in inequality and alienation.'”

In a statement Sunday, the Green Party of the United States said, “We in the Green Party of the United States express our sorrow and anger over the attacks in Beirut and Paris and deep sympathy for those who lost their lives, for the injured, for their loved ones, and for the people of Lebanon and France.”

The party also said, “Those who enabled the attacks must be brought to justice, but we oppose reckless state-sanctioned retaliation that will result in more civilian casualties and repressive measures against people not responsible for such attacks. … We call for an end to terrorism and to foreign policies that motivate terrorism, including U.S. military actions and wars for oil and geopolitical control that have resulted in mass death and mayhem. A state of perpetual undeclared global war, even against the most reprehensible of foes, will draw more attacks on civilian populations.”

Maryland Green Party U.S. Senate candidate Margaret Flowers was arrested Tuesday morning at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on instruction of committee chairman Sen. John McCain. Flowers and several CODEPINK activists attended the hearing to protest the U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan Saturday that killed at least 22 people including patients and children.

The activists were wearing medical garb marked with fake blood, and Flowers was holding a sign which read “BOMBING HOSPITALS= WAR CRIME”. On being removed from the hearing room, Flowers said, “Bombing hospitals is a war crime. Stop the bombing now.” She later said from the Capitol Hill jail, “There needs to be an independent investigation into the hospital bombing in Kunduz because targeting hospitals is against international law. I am appalled first that the US did this and second that instead of taking responsibility, the military is trying to avoid it.”

Members of the Green Party of Minnesota joined Black Lives Matter activists Sunday in marching in support of ‎Marcus Abrams‬, a 17-year-old black teenager with autism who was beaten by city Metro Transit Police on August 31.

Green Party of Minnesota spokesperson Brandon Long said, “It’s time that police are not only trained to be culturally sensitive in their interactions with communities of color, but are also competent enough to deal with community members who have disabilities and mental illness. How Marcus was treated by Metro Transit police is unacceptable.”

The Green Party of New York State has issued a statement on the 14th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, saying the party “remembers the victims and their families who have suffered a tragic loss on this day. The bravery and compassion of first responders, trade unionists, health care workers, community activists and ordinary citizens on September 11th and the days and weeks to follow brought NYC and the country together. Unfortunately, our government used this awful tragedy to catapult our country into endless wars abroad and violation of rights at home that persists today.”

The Green Party of New York State “strongly opposed the bombing of Afghanistan and the rounding up and detention of scores of Muslims who were targeted as a threat only because of their religion or nationality,” and said “acts of terror, whether committed by ISIS, the CIA or other organizations intent on wreaking havoc, are never justified but should also never be used as justification for persecution or war.”

The Green Party is calling for “an expanded U.S. role in offering aid and new homes for Middle Eastern refugees and an end to interventionist ‘regime change’ policies that continue to provoke violent conflict and displacement of civilians,” the party said in a statement Thursday.

Green Party national co-chair Bahram Zandi said, “The crisis of displacement has been caused in large measure by U.S. policies in the Middle East, north Africa, and western Asia. When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in the last decade and ousted Qaddafi in Libya in 2011, the result was an era of regional instability and violence in countries between Pakistan and Nigeria. Greens warned that this would happen and opposed all of these actions.”

The Green Party is calling on the U.S. to end policies of military intervention and regime change, commit to providing humanitarian aid, and lead an international summit on Syrian refugee relief.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s campaign said Thursday that the U.S. government “must recognize its moral obligation to make a major and immediate commitment to humanitarian relief for the refugees pouring into Europe.” The campaign said the United States “cannot walk away from this crisis, given the major and direct role of U.S. foreign policy in militarizing the Middle East and destabilizing societies there.”

Stein added, “The present crisis of refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria is the inevitable consequence of a foreign policy that puts oil profits, weapons sales, and support for totalitarian regimes above people, planet, and peace.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Green Party leaders said that provocation and aggressive posturing by the U.S. against Iran, Venezuela, and Russia should be understood as dangerous attempts to assert U.S. political and economic hegemony abroad while maintaining a domestic wartime economy.

Many Greens are participating in “Spring Rising,” March 18-21, four days of anti-war and pro-peace events in Washington, D.C., that will mark the twelve-year point since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq (http://SpringRising.org).

Greens said that a military confrontation between the U.S. and any one of these countries could trigger a wider, more destructive, and possibly global conflict. Party leaders noted that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are responsible for one third of the national debt, as well as 700,000 wounded U.S. veterans and mass civilian casualties in both countries. Continue Reading →

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Green Party opposes proposed plans to provide Ukraine’s armed forces military aid to fight rebels who are allegedly receiving assistance from Russia and urges President Obama to reject the advice of warhawk advisors and Congressmembers.

“Washington has used the people of Ukraine as chess pieces in a bid to strengthen NATO and isolate Russia politically, militarily, and economically, taking advantage of Russia’s vulnerability in the wake of sanctions and Saudi Arabia’s reduction of oil prices. Instead of seeking peace, the U.S. is aggravating tensions, risking a face-off with Russia that could spark a proxy war or even a global conflict. This game isn’t about self-defense for the U.S., it’s about expanding the power of NATO and enforcing the U.S.’s superpower status,” said Starlene Rankin, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. Continue Reading →